KDE's Plasma is heating up (Linux.com)

Posted Jun 24, 2007 1:39 UTC (Sun) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

"" Additionally, "extensive" improvements have been made to SuperKaramba, which now exists as a library within Plasma. ""

Well, why ? Doesn't the Plasma engine already offer all there is needed to write all kinds off widgets/applets, *and to support karamba themes out there* ?

If it doesn't why not extend the engine to do it or change the karamba themes to be plasmoids ? I believe Kross would need to support Perl, other tweaks and that is it.

The idea is that *everything appearing on desktop besides windows* should be a plasmoid, for consistency and clearness.

Adds to that Universal Desktop Metaphor that Kiosks don't need windows, neither does MythTV or other media center PCs or appliances. PDAs could also use plasma with Qtopia or any other compatible toolkit framework... so...

Independent of 'file manager view', 'windowing engine', 'window managers', and being 'toolkit agnostic'(could!), Plasma can be a OSS desktop standard as an Universal Desktop Metaphor capable of 3D or 2D.
And being highly extensible as it is already, it would offer all the * differentiability * seeked by the the many OSS vendors and the *portability* seked by many application writers.

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Well, I CANNOT TELL HOW MUCH DIFFICULT IT WOULD BE but this is my view for what it worths, and i think it could be a very good design outline for desktop;

A) A Login/Desktop Manager(KDM... or any other); *independent* extensible and configurable, would load Plasma natively or as a Shell replacement as is common for Win2k/XP OSes:

B) Plasma(IS THE 'desktop environment); *independent* from 'file manager view' and 'windowing engine', extensible and configurable from 3D Panoramic views as in LookingGlass, to flat minimal 2D, assisting as much as possible (relaying?) any toolkit framework present in the system, would 'load':

B_1) It should be Plasma to load the X server (cgwin), or any other windowing engine for that matter, *in the background* and with the functionality as needed.... but easily extensible and configurable because Kiosks, Media Appliances, PDAs, etc... have different needs...

B_2) Common theming engine, independent, extensible and configurable, as a possible extension of the *Display Canvas*, capable of displaying always the same icon pack, font pack, color scheme and pallets, and common minimal widget set, regardless of the desktop environment loaded and the many different toolkit frameworks of the different applications running.
Very very good integration support( i hope) then for Qt, GTK, wxWidgets, Win32 and Cocoa and or very very little change to those frameworks.

( *Tricky* part this one, but nothing that time and cooperation wont fix. As to the non X environments i don't think that it would be impossible to integrate the native librarys... or some form of UxTheme or Aqua replacement.

The Idea is to have across different OSes and toolkit frameworks used, an all encompassing consistent look & feel any time that Plasma is used as the desktop... )

B_3) A Windows Manager, triggered loaded as configured, whenever a 'proper' windowing engine ( X as example) is also loaded.

The 'windowing engines(X, GDI, etc...)', the 'Common theming engine' and the 'Window Manager' can be almost completely *independent* from one another. They would be like *services*, and would be ALL loaded from plasma *support librarys* facilities.

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The rational is:

1. A DM would automatically load Plasma THE DESKTOP (as shell replacement or not), capable of loading 'some plasmoids' and any application from any toolkit framework present in the system in full screen( no windows), based on a very simple engine for the purpose.

2. ALL configurations for the display, including background engines would be made from a full screen ( tabbed ?) main application interface of the DM. So if the X server blows up, or the compositing engine or even KDE or Gnome base environment freezes up it can automatically revert back to the DM to try a different configuration.

3. Matter of fact ALL configurations directly related to the hardware and system kernel, should be made from this main DM window application, integrating the many dispersed (zoo !) collection of tools for that matter.

4. Upon Plasma loading, a 'screen'/ Windowing engine (X, gdi, etc...) is loaded unavoidably, for full screen, or for windows mode in which case a Window Manager (kwin, beryl...) is automatically loaded also.
But most of the plugin effects of beryl or kwin4, should be part of the plasma *support librarys* for plugins instead.

5. We all know that is possible to have different windowing engines on different virtual machines, but how about different windowing engines on different windows or different parts of the screen(Desktops) ? ReactOS has a GDI replacement in GPL, make that to run concurrently with X, and how much much better wouldn't it be for Wine and Cedega to run Win2k/XP apps and games on a Linux Plasma desktop ?

6. In the same line of reason it could be possible to have different 'windows' applying different themes to the corresponding apps, as it would be much much easier for Mozilla and OpenOffice to have a ** native look & feel across different desktop environments and across different OSes running Plasma** if they support the common engine approach.

7. Having a different 'Window Manager' for different windows on the same desktop would be awkward... to say the least, even if possible. But 3D Window Managers will tend to pass much of their functionality to Plasma anyway.

8. At last!... to avoid a war, and for better security (type safety), and cleaner code, D would be the preferable language for this Universal Desktop Metaphor and Management System.

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And so 1 h and 1 half have passed doing ... hmmm.... scracthing head!... oh well!

Nevertheless i would try undoubtedly to sell Plasma as a Universal Desktop Metaphor at Freedesktop.org... and if not the whole story above, at least large parts of it also...